Body | Soul | Crisis | Recovery
The University of St. Thomas Art History, English, Museum Studies, and Creative Writing & Publishing graduate programs will host a virtual interdisciplinary conference on Friday, April 23, 2021. While papers addressing any aspect of literature, film, art history, architecture, museum studies, new media, and cultural studies will be considered, the graduate programs particularly welcome proposals for papers exploring the conference theme across all time periods, media, and geographical regions. We are also seeking creative writers to read original work related to the conference theme.
We welcome you to explore the theme of Body | Soul | Crisis | Recovery in an interdisciplinary way, engaging a wide variety of approaches, traditions, innovations, and points of view, in art or texts from any historical moment.
Topics may include but are not limited to:
- Body and Soul Impacts: Racial (in)justice; effects of the current pandemic; history and representation of plagues, illness and other pandemics; isolation and loneliness; relationships; disability studies; monuments or sculptures of the body.
- Movement of Body and Soul: The body in motion; stay at home orders limiting movement, travel bans, immigration, housing loss; calls to action (movement of soul), civil unrest; spiritual movements; religious revivals; physical well-being; sports and physical movement; representation of movement; violence against the body or soul.
- Rhetoric/Art of Sickness and Health: The history and understanding of the individual being and the collective; health and wellness representations or depictions; rhetoric of sickness and health applied to societies, governments, communities.
- Physical Environments of the Body and Soul: Nature and the self’s relationship with it; sustainability; climate change; water; what nourishes and what poisons; urban, suburban or rural environments; environmental disasters or crises.
- Healing of Body and Soul: Recovery; technology advances; pseudo science; placebo effect; pain; preventative care; health care; traditional therapies; alternative medicine; trauma; restorative justice.
- Creative Reactions to the Body, Soul, Crisis, Recovery: Performance art, street art, sculpture, installations, public art, music, creative writing.
We encourage analyses of artistic, literary, architectural, historical, cultural, cinematic, digital, and/or other textualities, as well as creative writing samples. Proposals for whole panels (three presenters) or roundtables (four or more presenters) are welcome in addition to individual papers.